Do you know that bees have a secret language?
Humans aren’t the only creatures who have a complex language structure. Our dear little busy bees too have a secret language system in place to communicate. Surprised? You may find it hard to believe, but several scientific studies also show that these tiny insects have a great ability for communication. Here’s an interesting piece of information for you: People who study bees are known as Melitologist.
We all know that bees are highly social creatures. It has been found that a bee separated from its colony will die within a few days. Inside the beehive, there are nearly 60,000 members. This necessitated them to create languages that connect all the members. Let us unravel the mystery of bees' secret language!
How do bees exchange messages?
In 1912, Austrian researcher Karl Frisch began examining bees and their unique behaviour. He conducted numerous experiments to prove that bees communicated with gestures and a secret language. Are you curious to know about their methods of transferring information?
Well, bees communicate via a unique olfactory sense. It involves pheromones and various hums and vibrations. Pheromones are mixtures of chemical substances that every bee releases inside the hive or into the environment. These are released for the purposes of warning in case of danger or communicating about mating and egg-laying. The queen bee is the primary user of this form of communication, which is a very powerful tool.
Waggle, Waggle, Waggle!
The most remarkable way that bees communicate is through the bee dance. When a bee returns to the hive with food, she has to impart ‘directions’ to the remaining bees in the swarm so that they can get food. You must be wondering how they do it. They have a unique flight shaped like the number eight. this movement is called the waggle dance.
During the waggle dance, bees repeatedly walk in a complex figure-of-eight pattern while waggling their abdomens from side to side. They give the directions and distances needed to reach the food source through this dance. You will be amazed to know that these bees not only tell their friends where the nectar is, but also let them know about all the obstacles in their way. Extraordinary, isn’t it? Karl Frisch was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for the discovery of the waggle dance.
The marvels of the queen pheromones
As already mentioned, the use of pheromones by queen bees is another excellent method of communication in the bee community. It strongly influences the behaviour of worker bees and the rest of the swarm. The queen's pheromones can make the bees very obedient. Beekeepers use this to prevent getting stung when they carry out specific tasks. It has also been observed that the queen bee uses her pheromones before mating.